Message Students
From the dashboard, first look at the Notifications (bell icon) for a count of new messages. The count will also show up next to Communication:
Sending Messages
Open your inbox by selecting Communication from the Connect panel or the left menu.
All messages you send and receive here are also sent to the email associated with your institutional account. You can reply to any of these messages from that email and they will be captured here. If you continue the conversation from your other email app, keep the subject the same so it can still be tracked in the Advising platform.
When you start a new message, type in the To field to search for a student by name or student ID.
Advising Notes — Best practice is to enable the checkbox to Create an advising note from this message. This ensures the insights from your conversation thread are shared with their advisors.
Student Privacy — Texts and emails that you send out to multiple students are always handled as blind copies (BCC): the students won’t know which other students were included in your message, and their replies only come back to you.
Sending Texts (SMS)
Below the Email inbox is your inbox for SMS (texts). The SMS interface lets you reach students who more readily respond to texts on their phones. If you also want to respond to texts from your own phone, just access the Advising site from a browser on your phone (there is no app to install, so your phone type doesn’t matter).
Your Privacy — Texts are managed entirely through the application: your personal cell number is never involved in these texts. Once a student receives your SMS from this application, they will be able to reply to that number and continue communicating with you using it, for as long as you’re authorized to use the system.
Students Who Opt Out — If a student has opted out of receiving SMS, the system will alert you.
- If you are messaging only one student, change the message type to Email.
- If you are messaging to several, scroll down and provide a Subject line for the email that will be sent to those who will get an email version of your message.
